


The Breadth Between

by tupperwaregoods



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Short One Shot, Thranto, implied sexual relations, no gods and definitely no masters, no questions no answers, you might feel some emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 19:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20801585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tupperwaregoods/pseuds/tupperwaregoods
Summary: Where did Thrawn go after the fall of The Empire? Eli has been searching for some time, and with so many questions on his mind.





	The Breadth Between

Why was it that all outer-rim cantinas seemed to smell exactly the same as the last? With upper notes of warm alcohol, middle notes of blood and must, and finally a base of unwashed bodies. The perpetual layer of grime laying dormant on every surface further added to his discomfort. After his extended time with the Chiss military, reintroducing a an environment of uncleanliness to his life just seemed laborious. They were also, more often that not, cloaked in near darkness, Eli noted. Here and there when a new patron entered, rather than turn to see who it was, everyone tended to avert their eyes to the far wall or right into their drinks. The brief rectangle of daylight that would stream in from the slid-open doors and through the dense atmosphere was enough to blind even the most sight-impaired Arconan.

Eli had lost count of how many drinks he’d ordered over the last cycle. At first he’d thought it wise to slowly nurse them – he expected having plenty of waiting to do and wouldn’t it be silly to waste a moderately average drink? – but somewhere after the sixth or seventh location, he’d had enough of it. Now his first choice was the mysterious blue milk popular with, he assumed, teetotallers in the region. It’d be better not to know where it came from, he thought, taking in several gulps – the fact that it tasted sweet and not too heavy was enough to stave off any outlying curiosity. It managed to keep him sated, too, plus it was cheap enough.

The news of Thrawn’s disappearance had conjured mixed feelings aboard the _Steadfast_. While many still held some regard for him over their battle with the Grysks some time ago, word had similarly spread regarding his ruthless nature while presiding over Lothal. Or perhaps it wasn’t the fact he was ruthless – that was a trait often called on in battle – rather, it was almost as if Thrawn had lost his sense of calm, his actions becoming sloppy and, dare he say, thoughtless. Whatever perceptions any of them had were gleaned from the holonet; in his heart, Eli couldn’t yet rule out the fact that it was all adulterated media. The more he read, the less it sounded like the Thrawn he knew. Admiral Ar’alani must have felt the same. When Eli entered her office at his appointed time, she had not even batted an eyelid over his request for leave. “Tell him to return. I must have a word with him,” was all she had said. Her tone was not stern nor sad – it simply was. She granted him indefinite leave, on the condition that he report in ever so often and contact her immediately with his coordinates should he find Thrawn.

Eli hoped that Admiral Ar’alani’s faith in him was strong; all he had to refer to was his own analysis of the data he’d gathered on purrgil – their migratory patterns, their diet, how they manoeuvred, their life cycles; anything and everything could come in handy, really. Still, purrgil in general weren’t widely studied as a species, so with such a small group of data it was hard to even say for sure if he was headed on the right path. So far he had not run into a single one, but the locals he managed to question all happily told him that “yes, the darn creatures come through here all the time!”

He’d reached the bottom of his third glass of blue milk now, and, having paced himself well, had witnessed a two complete turnovers of the cantina’s patrons, save for a few stragglers. Eli didn’t see anyone with skin even an adjacent shade of blue, nor had the barkeep or anyone who’d passed through. Sometimes he wondered if he were looking for purrgil or a single Chiss – and which of the two would turn up first? They were slowly morphing into mythical entities within his mind. 

Eli wanted to get off planet before the greyish ball of a sun fell out of the sky; word got around that things tended to be pretty rough once night enveloped the lands. The streets were already much emptier than when he had arrived. Eli happened to look down at his clothes as he left: a simple three-quarter sleeve shirt, khaki pants, an easy bandana and a sand-coloured stetson hat, inspired by a postcard-picture of outlaws he’d come across one day on the holonet. 

On the hem of his shirt, to the left, he noticed a small splash of blue. He licked the tip of his index finger and tried to wipe it off, but it only got worse, smudging across and getting darker. Eli’d always been clumsy with his food – liquid or solid, consistency didn’t matter. In the first years of the academy, Thrawn, unable to stand the utter sloppiness food stains presented themselves as, took to doing Eli’s laundry for him with extra care. Later on, he’d taught Eli how to remove the pesky stains himself, casually explaining the importance spotless uniforms played towards maintaining good impressions in an academy that already scowled upon them. Now playing the outlaw, he’d just have to deal with letting them be, despite the fact that they bothered him.

As he trotted towards his speederbike, a loud frustrated grunt captured his attention. In his periphery, there stood an extremely large Gamorrean woman on the porch of her little hut-shop, her head seemingly about to burst out from the awning above the entrance. She was huffing and squealing with utmost annoyance as she swatted the air with a wooden spatula, eyes trained on something before her. Eli straddled his bike, feigning ignorance, but peered up. Scurrying away from her reach was a hooded figure, dressed in linens that were maybe white and pristine many cycles ago, but was not reduced to a splotchy brown and riddled with holes where it hovered above the ground. Just as the mysterious person turned a corner down an alley between two buildings, they looked over their shoulder – most likely to make sure that no one had paid significant attention to the commotion – and what Eli saw had him tumbling off his bike and stumbling towards the unknown.

He’d spotted two flashes of red amidst a deep universe of blue skin, and felt something drop in the pit of his stomach. Before he could think clearly about anything, he was already moving forward.

Eli barrelled towards the unseen alleyway, only trailing behind by several paces that he was sure he could close off. Yet, when he finally found himself staring with immense tunnel vision down the narrow lane, cramped between back of two dilapidated buildings, there was no one there. How could that be? Eli slowly tip-toed his way forward, attempting a cat-like precision that ultimately failed, his toes causing a scuffling sound as they dragged forward on the dirt below. There weren’t even any perpendicular lanes adjacent to where he was. As he reached the end of the alleyway, Eli heard a soft crack behind him, and swerved to see the robed figure sprinting off backwards from where they’d both entered.

“Wait!” Eli called out. Rather than turn around, he came out from the back end of the alleyway, taking a sharp left and making a quick round in the hopes of cutting the person off. He passed the front of an old, empty shophouse, propelling himself at an incredible speed even as his ankles threatened to knock him over, wobbling with exhaustion every time his feet slammed against the uneven ground. The landscape here slanted downhill, giving him extra acceleration. 

Eli was making good time – the stranger was yet to emerge from the entrance of the alleyway. At the bottom, the slope came to an abrupt halt, the new flat ground marked with jagged rocks sprouting up like icebergs in a sandy ocean. Eli’s main weakness has always been his lack of quick reflexes; he fell, his fall carrying forth all velocity still imbued in his adrenaline-spiked body as he crashed, hands outstretched, into the dirt. He skit forward a good distance – when he finally came to a stop, his palms were scuffed and burning. Though he could still feel his bones rattling, Eli did his best to push himself back up. He’d made it up to his hands and a knee, when all of a sudden a large weight pushed against him, drastically flipping him back to the ground. As he lay on his back, eyes to the sky, Eli saw as the stranger tumbled over him. For that brief moment, everything seemed to move in slow motion; he landed back into the present with the stranger’s full weight splayed across his midsection. Their eyes met, and he knew then and there that this was the person he was looking for. 

He’d finally found who he was looking for.

-

Soon the sun reached a full retreat, and the darkness between them prevented Eli from getting a read from Thrawn’s facial expressions. Then again, he’d never been able to fully possess that skill like the Chiss did. Maybe he was just feeling hopeful.

Thrawn could have run off if he wanted to, but he didn’t, and Eli felt like he’d simply been playing hide-and-seek with a child; having been caught, Thrawn acknowledged that he had to address the matter – had to address Eli. The Chiss continued walking briskly, though now he no longer ran with his full stride. This was clearly intentional – after they had both recovered from the tumble, Thrawn had quickly beckoned for Eli to follow him, inadvertently stopping him from asking a single question despite a whole deluge of them threatening to flood out. Their fall had caught the attention of passers-by on their way out of the main square, many of whom scattered immediately, fearing that a fight between two thugs was about to break out.

They walked in total silence. Eli felt the back of his neck prickling with discomfort; this was even worse than when they had finally met again on the _Steadfast_ after all that time – Thrawn offering nothing but a mere formality: “Good-day, Lieutenant Vanto,” he’d said, and nothing more, the pressing imminence of a Grysk plot consuming the space between them till all that was left was that single utterance, devoid of meaning.

Thrawn led Eli past all the buildings and beyond the town’s perimeter. Under their boots the crunch of gravel turned to the sticky feeling of muddier ground alleviated by a thick growth of wild grass that took in the moonlight and gave off a faint purplish glow. As the sounds of speederbikes and rushing locals faded behind them, Thrawn finally came to a stop, one so sudden that Eli almost collided with the back of him. But he didn’t turn around to look at him, nor to say anything. Why had Thrawn led him all the way out here, and why was the onus on him to say what needed to be said?

Gripped by an outrage that rose from within, unbridled and precluding rational thinking, Eli braced his body weight on his right leg and lunged forward, shoving Thrawn against a nearby tree with his hands on the Chiss’s shoulders. His hands stayed upon them, angling upwards. Above, the leaves rustled; the sound of something, fruits perhaps, could be heard as they fell and gently thumped on the ground, rolling towards where they stood. Thrawn seemed unaffected by his acting out and simply stared into his eyes; the deep red colour of his similarly took on an ethereal glow in the night. 

For a moment they stared at each other – Eli’s breath came out in heavy exhalations, his heart smashing against his chest after all that exertion and elevated by a rumbling in his gut he couldn’t yet put a finger on. His panting hung between them, blocking out any other echoes and melodies of the nature around them. All this time Eli hadn’t even considered if they were truly alone.

What could he say, really? What did he want to say?

_Is it true – what you did on Lothal, what you did in the name of the Empire, an empire that was never even truly yours to command, of the stories of suffering that made its way across the system and all the way to the Ascendancy? Where did you disappear to? Where have you been? Why haven’t I heard from you? _

_Where were you when your people needed you? When_ I _needed you…_

Yet Eli couldn’t say all that. The more questions he’d managed to collect over the cycles the more he found them unable to be verbalised, instead balled up like an ever-growing cancer that attached itself to the walls of his throat, blocking not just sound but air from passing through. As much as he could it hurt, all of it – wanting answers, reasons, explanations. 

Eli’s hands slid off Thrawn’s shoulders and rested upon his chest, bracing himself as his forehead gravitated towards the same space. He wondered, was this where Chiss hearts resided as well, locked away behind a cage of steel and grit, but its pulses somehow still to be felt on the surface? Eli couldn’t feel anything of that sort as his forehead lay on Thrawn’s chest. He felt, instead, arms encircling him and meeting at the small of his back, pressing him tighter against the body he sought.

Eli shifted to look up, and as he did, he felt a pair of lips – soft and cold, yet familiar – press against his temple. As they moved away, he tip-toed and extended his neck, his own lips pressing against the other. 

Now there was warmth, but maybe it was just from the heat of his own body spreading forth.

-

“It appears some things never change.”

The words riled Eli up from his slow descent into slumber.

“What?” he asked. He rubbed his eyes. The temperatures were beginning to drop. Eli wrapped the cloak tighter around his bare chest. The chill had begun to give him goosebumps. Thrawn, on the other hand, remained open to the elements, clad only in his khaki trousers. His hands were clasped, as if in prayer, and resting on his abdomen, only slightly above where Eli’s head rested on his lower belly area.

“The mark on your shirt.” Thrawn replied.

“Oh, the stain?” Eli could feel his cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I couldn’t get it out.”

There was a moment of silence between them. In the far distance, a strange animal made an unsightly cawing sound that was pre-emptively cut off, as if devoured mid-call by a predator.

“Perhaps,” Thrawn began, “if you left your shirt with me, I could assist you with removing that unsightly mark.”

Again, Eli peered up at Thrawn the best he could, his neck straining a little at the angle. This had been the most number of words exchanged between them since their meeting, not just presently but since all that time ago – since the _Steadfast_, maybe. Time had separated them now, moulding them into different people. Eli could feel the truth of the matter as he’d traced the contours of Thrawn’s torso earlier when they were intertwined with one another. Though the Chiss’ gentle touch remained true to this side of him that, Eli believed, only he got to see, he could tell that Thrawn would not speak of anything else that wasn’t his choosing. Every second that stood between them had hardened – a brick in a wall that now protected them from each other – but also limited them, stopping short a fluid flow of passion that Eli could no longer feel as Thrawn had, in reverse, held him against the tree and breathed upon his neck in short bursts.

“Sure,” Eli finally answered. “But I’ll need your shirt in exchange. I don’t have a cloak to cover up. I definitely can’t go back into the village half-dressed.”

Thrawn agreed, balling up his shirt to the side and lifting Eli’s head gingerly to place it under his head like a pillow.

Now they would continue to lie here for a while, but later, Eli would remember to ask Thrawn just when he could expect his own shirt back in the future. He promised himself he wouldn’t forget to ask at least that one question. Eli reminded himself of it over and over again as he finally drifted off.

In the morning, Eli would be woken up by a strange hook-nosed humanoid species trudging through the forest with a scythe-like instrument on his back and a woven basket. He would sit up and be surprised by the fact that he were dressed, Thrawn’s shirt somehow on him and dangling down to his thighs. His stained shirt would be gone, and there would be no promise of when it would be returned, cleaned and good as new.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it has taken me so long to get another fic out, and a short one to boot. I've been having my own wrestle with mental health here and there, so that's delayed my own motivation and progress, but finishing it up has definitely felt therapeutic. I can imagine that Eli must feel very anxious about all that goes on in Thrawn's head, and in that respect I deeply sympathise with him. 
> 
> Thank you for reading to the end. I haven't had any beta readers for this piece so please excuse any typos, spelling errors, tense errors, inconsistencies, etc. If anything, I hope that I haven't deviated too much from regular (if there is such a thing) characterisation. My intention was simply to capture a moment, an emotion, as it is usually with my writing. Right now, I cannot imagine what happens to Thrawn, or Eli, beyond that. I also have to admit that Eli is someone I feel a tenuous connection to, so going into his head (and shoes) was indeed a challenge. As usual, I welcome constructive feedback, and more than anything I am happy to keep contributing to this fandom as best I can.
> 
> This fic was in part prompted by the musings of Sisley, aka @skywalkerthrawn on twitter, so thank you too.
> 
> Last but not least, I would love to receive ideas and prompts if you like my writing. 
> 
> Thank you again and again for your support. I hope you enjoyed reading this and have a good day ahead of you.


End file.
